You will have seen this in the papers by now I’m sure:
http://www.the-richmonder.com/2012/08/paul-ryan-traded-on-insider-information.html
Will anyone be so naive as to believe his defense? That is was just a coincidence, that it was just an algorithm saving his ass for him? (Funny how that algorithm didn’t save anyone else’s ass.)
I saw that last night, and it obviously looked like insider trading. But the article said that what he did was legal, but i didn’t get why.
TPM not digging enough, and just making a simple correlation between two events. (1: trading stocks around banks to get to the most proftable ones; 2: a meeting which told him what banks were likely to be screwed.)
Unfortunately, it appears that the meeting that might have given Ryan ‘insider’ info was after the markets closed.
However, we know that Congressmen have routinely used confidential briefings to manipulate their trading on the stock market. What TPM should have done is look at what Ryan got to know before that evening as well. That’d probably do for him rather better.
But we also know US journalists don’t like hard work. Someone else will have to spend their days ploughing through the paperwork and diaries. . .
(Mind you, we also know, don’t we? that the majority of voters wouldn’t actually care? They don’t seem to have been much bothered about what really is a blatant series of scams so far.)
I believe insider trading wasn’t illegal for Congress prior to 2010, or something.
There’s a theory by commentors at Brad Delongs site that what Ryan was doing was not necessarily benefitting from insider information, but instead locking in losses from the financial collapse, so as to be able to carry those forward to net off tax liabilities from future gains.
The explanation that it was the fund doing the rebalancing doesn’t make sense. If you own shares in an ETF, you don’t need to account for every shift in position within the ETF. That’s ridiculous.
If you’re trying to mirror the fund in your own trading, then sure. But that would be an odd move.
Amy,
It was legal because Congress exempted itself from insider trading laws until very recently. There is nothing odd or sinister about this, because Congress exempts itself from about half the laws on the book, And there’s nothing sinister about that, either, because they pass so many, many laws, and so many, many of them are so very long and tedious, that from time to time somebody just innocently forgets not to type, “Oh, by the way, this law don’t apply to to us.”
Could happen to any of us. Let he who has forgotten not to type something cast the first stone.
Unless it’s Martha Stewart, of course.
Porn: apparently this kind of insider dealing on the part of Congressmen is ‘legal’. (Or at least, there are no sanctions against using information given to them in confidence to their private advantage.I seem to remember both houses quashing rules that would have stopped it, surprise, surprise.)
It’s only immoral. And we know the only thing politicians generally consider is ‘immoral’, especially in the US: getting found out for something they’d send anyone else to jail for life or demand the death penalty for.
And even if they are caught, seems they only have to appear on the telly, say ‘Sorry, but God has forgiven me’ and secretly wipe their eyes with a peeled onion.
Sib -
That’s what i was thinking. There was that brouhaha when half the congress profited from big pharma and insurance stocks while they were debating HCR in congress.
Squirrel -
It’s totally immoral, and i think Scott Brown put the legislation in to stop it, it must have passed. But if Ryan is in the hot seat because he’s the VP pick now, the Repubs can always look at Kerry and Pelosi’s trade deals and profits from insider trading too. I think Kerry and Pelosi et al played dumb, “oh, it was my broker, i had no idea what they were doing”, dunno if Ryan has that excuse.
Nat, anyone would think that Congress was exempt from laws or standards of behaviour the way you talk. And yet you know this is not so: Congress polices itself most efficiently, and has a robust and forceful list of sanctions to impose on malefactors.
When Charlie Rangel was found to have breached numerous ethics guidelines, was he let off scot-free? By no means! They censured him! Censure!
And he had to give up his committee posts. A crueller punishment could not be found. Do you have any idea what that does to a man?
And lest you think this is a rare occurrence, I will remind you that censure has been used five times in the last fifty years! Harrumph.
Problem with Rangel is that his constituents still voted him in again too. Most likely he does a good job for them in Harlem. (He may have been my own house rep, can’t remember). I have beef with Rangel because it’s his fault Hillary carpetbagged my (then) state.
So basically both parties are so dirty with insider trading that Obama’s campaign won’t touch this one.
I am shocked.
Bluth -
There were people in both parties that profited. I think Boehner was one too. But apparently there are still a few loopholes – like family members don’t have to file info on trades.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/19/politics/stock-act-loophole/index.html
Porn,
Frankly I don’t really give a shit if they made it legal. It’s so fucking low and slimy and wrong and immoral and nasty that it is insane to let it slide.
The only possible reason for letting it slide is both sides are as fucking low and slimy and wrong and immoral and nasty as the other.
Hey ho.
Oh, i’m not disagreeing with you there, Bluth. What a shower of shit we have supposedly “representing” us.
The government can’t even get bank executives in jail for insider trading, it must be really hard to nail a Congressman for it.